Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Good to see a decent turnout at Cabaret Voltaire in Edinburgh last night for The Joyriders first show in the capital in forever, ahead of their junket to Japan but enough of these j's already.

The Tango Rhums opened and I only saw a song and a bit or it might have been two. The Messthetics ethic is alive and well and gestating in Glenrothes. Investigate and encourage them because they're doing it for the right reasons.

The Bum Clocks are collecting a bit of an audience but what looks reasonable in theory and sounds a little like Alex Harvey reciting Burns with an appropriation of Detroit sounding software is alarmingly art-rock. The sound of young Scotland always kind of irrritated me and the sound of the middle-aged version ain’t thrilling me either. These guys were all there at The Big Bang but this is theatre and not rock'n'roll. It could run for weeks at the ICA. I've scratched the itch of wanting to see them in a club and don't want the wound to become infected. Their set seemed to last for a very long time and a minority of us were impervious to this Irvine Welsh intoned underside of the mither tongue. “Lust for Life” lost all its vital signs when it was used in “Trainspotting” and there’s a strange correlation between this and that in my opinion.

I don't recall ever seeing The Joyriders although I must have. Their entire recording history has just been put together as an omnibus edition “Others caught on but never caught up” on the “Fixing A Hole” imprint and they're playng out there in a couple of weeks. There's not a contrived bone in the box and their Lemonheads via Bob Mould fuzzpop sounds remarkably current. It also helps that they look like they're having some kind of fun up there. The reports from their opening stint for The Dolls were all good so this added to the expectation. And let's face it when was the last time you saw a band that reminded you of The Eastern Dark?

Exactly. Good solid pre-grunge, post buzzsaw pop in a dressing of nice tempo changes, these guys can segue. No faffing between songs other than to indulge in a bit of banter before they spiral off into another short sharp jolt. I hope that they keep at it this time because there are a lot of "hotly tipped" acts that are trading on way, way less. So mission accomplished with the beat ready to bring it on in the land of the rising sun come early August.

In just a matter of hours, Mr U will be arriving from Stockholm and we're gonna raise a couple or three to the immortal memory of a real bard, the late, very great Lennart Persson. Hopefully he'll be able to join us.

And finally for this instalment, I'd like to wish my good friends The Ledinsky's all the best for their sabbatical down under. Have a ball kids, there's a lot of GREAT music and people out yonder!

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A wee bit of background, etc.

This all kicked off as a print (Xerox) magazine in 1977 and now it's on the interweb. Named after the title track on The Dictators Go Girl Crazy (40 years old in 2015) the purpose has always been to uphold what’s good and pure and right in terms of rock’n’roll and its satellites.

It has nothing, nada, nowt to do with any festival(s) that devalue our namesake so don't send mp3's or anything else with regard to setting course for a career in the music business or anywhere else.

Take a look at what goes on here and if you think your fare fits then drop a line and maybe we can work something out.

I plan to put PDFs of all physical issues up here eventually and in addition, all Rockin’ Bones, Watch This and Fuzzbuzz.Maybe Psychedelic Basement, etc from Sounds too so that everything is in one place. Some of the quality of the source material isn’t terribly good but it’s all I have to work with. It will take some time. The 3 page pilot issue, “NBT 0” from September 1976 never survived as far as I know. Some of the content is a wee bit embarrassing at this juncture but every journey has to start someplace, right?